Three - staged, completely reusable spaceplane, reaching Moon & Mars.

Yuri Pilipishin · 2017-05-21 13:20:07

Three - staged, completely reusable spaceplane, with horizontal take off and landing; the first stage uses turbojet engine, the second stage uses ramjet (scramjet) engine, the third stage with rocket engine (the second stage is also used as an external fuel tank for the rocket engine of the third stage). A special feature is the possibility of multiple refuelings of the spaceship (the third stage) by (reusable) tankers, made in the same tanks which are used for climbing into orbit; such refuelings coulds be also multi - staged, due to which the spaceship could reach even a geostationary orbit, Moon, Mars and asteroids (the only price is the amount of launches of reusable tankers, and the time needed).

For landing on the Moon and Mars, special reusable modules are used.

In order to significally reduce amount of launches, needed for Mars mission, cheap standard non - reusable tankers could also be engaged (they are used for transporting fuel in space, and could be abandoned in space, presumably on Mars orbit, after mission is finished)

That way, this is the only available realistic project (as far as I know) making it possible for humans to reach Moon, Mars, asteroids, and return back to Earth, using non - nuclear reusable spaceship.

The general design could be understood from drawings:

drawing 1

drawing 2

A more detailed description of the project is in Ukrainian, those who are interested could translate it by Google (please note, this is all my intellectual property):

http://lychakivsky.dreamwidth.org/7865.html
http://lychakivsky.dreamwidth.org/8214.html
http://lychakivsky.dreamwidth.org/13658.html

Last edited by Yuri Pilipishin (2017-06-19 11:26:30)

louis · 2017-05-21 17:05:56

Scramjets have not been fully proven yet have they?

SpaceNut · 2017-05-21 18:16:18

We have had several discusions with scramjets to be used in various space planes.

http://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=7310
http://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=2173
http://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=4534

There are more examples of these topics....

kbd512 · 2017-05-21 21:56:23

This is akin to the fully reusable Rockwell Star Raker concept, but substantially more complicated.

Yuri Pilipishin · 2017-05-22 01:41:32

kbd512 wrote:

This is akin to the fully reusable Rockwell Star Raker concept, but substantially more complicated.

Not quite so. Rockwell Star Raker, and all similar HTHL SSTO concepts (X-30, Skylon, etc.) are plainly not realistic. To put it simply, they would not be able to reach orbital velocity. It is by far not possible to reach these 7.9km/sec in space using only one reusable stage (with non-nuclear engines, to be specific).

Moreover, even when you use two reusable stages (e.g. in Saenger-2 concept), reaching of orbital velocity seems also nearly impossible. Maybe, it could be possible in future, with more sophisticated turboramjet engines - but not at the present level of technology; and even if the two-staged concept would in future become able to reach orbit, anyway its mass effectiveness would be much, much worse as compared to three-staged design. But again, if you already use two stages, so your spaceplane is not all-in-one thing anyway, so why not use three stages? Especially, taking into account, that three staged concept perfectly fits for three different types of engines: turbojet, ramjet, rocket.

This design provides the possibility to reach orbit on the present level of technology; and with using of multiple and multistaged refuelings - it also makes possible reaching of all Earth orbits, Moon, Mars, asteroids on the same universal spaceship. I have not seen any other realistic concept of spaceplane, that would be even nearly so powerful and universal.

Last edited by Yuri Pilipishin (2017-05-22 02:02:37)

kbd512 · 2017-05-22 10:46:57

Is there any technical basis for the claim that the Star Raker would not be able to reach orbit, or is that just an opinion?

Are there any operational scramjet engines larger than the ones on small missiles?

If not, then this concept is no more feasible than Star Raker. I've never seen or heard of any operational scramjet-powered vehicles, although NASA and DoD have certainly tried on several occasions. Personally, I think both concepts are grossly unrealistic on a cost-per-flight basis. The US had an operational lift body program for decades, but nobody I know of would ever argue that it was in any way cost-effective.

The Soviets had one flight with Buran, but that vehicle was every bit as unrealistic to operate, on a cost-per-flight basis, as the Space Shuttle was. Few, if any, fully reusable vehicles confer operating cost advantages over current reusable booster technology rockets like Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy. I doubt this concept is any different in that regard.

Edit:

I'm not trying to be a Debbie Downer here, I just think these concepts always look better on paper than engineering reality ever achieves.

If the Russians or Europeans can make this work, then more power to them. I'm pretty pleased with reusable boosters and payload fairings that require minimal maintenance prior to the next flight. There's no engineering advantage to winged vehicles except in the lower atmosphere of Earth. Space Shuttle, Buran, and Venture Star pretty much proved just how expensive and complicated these concepts were to actually implement.

Last edited by kbd512 (2017-05-22 11:13:41)

GW Johnson · 2017-05-22 18:09:38

Copied from post 37 in the thread titled “spaceplane” under “interplanetary transportation”, and dated Nov 18, 2015. This began as a response to another posting that demanded I consider only single stage to orbit. As for going anywhere else, the delta-vee requirements begin at about twice what is required to reach low Earth orbit, once you look beyond the moon.

copied posting:

Thread title is "spaceplane", not "SSTO". Under that title, multistage systems are indeed kosher.

Desire to do something does NOT trump physics and chemistry. With chemical or even solid core nuclear energy sources, the mass ratio requirements are too high and the payload fraction too low for a true SSTO aircraft. Not with the technologies and materials that we actually have. That's just physics.

And don't forget that in the thin air all airbreathers have low frontal thrust density, because the combustion chamber pressures are inherently low, because they are only a ratio to ambient air pressure. To accelerate or climb, (thrust minus drag)/weight must be significantly greater than 0. Physics.

What killed X-30 was low frontal thrust density at over 100,000 feet altitudes, plus the utterly-appalling drag losses of trying to fly Mach 10+ that low in the atmosphere (drag losses far, far larger than the orbital speed requirement). It was mostly physics, not so much technology, that caused the failure of that program. (That and incredibly inept management and political decision-making right up front when the project started.)

Although, scramjet technology was unready then, just like it still is today.

Nothing about that fatal physics problem has changed since. Nor have the technologies, when you get right down to what we actually have available.

If you want to go chemical, then you really need to go TSTO (or even 3 stages) to reach orbit at feasible mass ratios and payload fractions. Doesn't matter whether you launch vertically or horizontally.

From the standpoint of drag loss reduction, vertical launch is more efficient, typically only needing a 10% increase in delta-vee over the endpoint requirement velocity. But you are typically looking at leaving sensible air at only about 2000 ft/sec (700 m/s) on a near-vertical path at around 100,000 ft (30 km) altitude.

Horizontal takeoff trajectories have exponentially-higher drag losses, but allow you to take advantage of airbreathers for their higher Isp. But it has to have air to breathe! Which forces you to stay low as you accelerate. Where the drag and heating get enormous as you speed up. That's a real iffy tail-chase, because of physics. Solution spaces go to zero size very quickly as you attempt more demanding design requirements.

From a reusability standpoint, it does not have to be SSTO. You can fly a carrier airplane back to base like any other airplane. No different than a bomber, fundamentally. The second stage can be an airplane (spaceplane), or it can be a capsule-plus-rocket stage.

Mass ratio is more feasible if the staging speed is closer to 10,000 ft/sec than 6000 ft/sec. This requirement is tougher to meet with a spaceplane second stage (because so much more inert mass must be delivered on-orbit) than it is a capsule-plus-rocket-stage. Nasty little fact of life, but there it is.

I do notice that no one has ever recovered a stage from orbit, nor is anyone contemplating making the attempt yet. The heat protection for entry is heavy, and the decelerating airloads on the stage are enormous, requiring a far stronger structure which is far heavier.

Not to mention the precision attitude control, and the final touchdown scheme (chutes or whatever). These things are all unfavorable for attempting a solution to that problem.

I also notice that there has never, ever been a reentry vehicle that had adjacent nacelles. That's because of shock-impingement heating. It's even worse than stagnation point heating. So, a small plane carried on the back of a big one makes less and less sense as speeds exceed about Mach 4. The impinging shock waves cut the adjacent structures to pieces. To stage at speeds in the Mach 6 to 10 range, your second stage will need to be an internally-carried store, and you will have to pull up out of the air to open the doors and release it.

Be careful in your estimates about what can be done with airbreathers, because neither thrust nor specific impulse are even remotely constant as flight conditions change. And there are other less-obvious limits on these technologies.

For example, Antius has a ramjet concept in his post above that takes over at 400 mph and yet thrusts greater than drag at Mach 6. Sorry, the technology simply doesn't work that way. Physics does not allow it.

Ramjets capable of thrusting at high subsonic speed have nose-mounted pitot/normal shock inlets and convergent-only nozzles that don't choke until flight speed reaches about Mach 1.1. These designs have thrust that peaks about Mach 3, Isp peaking at around 900-1000 sec at Mach 1.5, and thrust usually is less than almost any imaginable airframe drag by about Mach 2 to 2.5, at the very outside 3.

The high speed ramjet designs capable of thrust = drag near Mach 6 (and only on a VERY clean airframe!!!) have external compression features to their nose-mounted inlets, a choked convergent-divergent nozzle, and a min takeover speed in the Mach 1.8 to 2.5 range. Isp peaks just above shock-on-lip speed (near Mach 3.5 to 4), thrust rises from low to max at shock-on-lip speed (just about Mach 3 for this type of application), and slowly decreases as speed increases. Peak Isp is around 1300-1500 sec. At Mach 6 it's down to around 400 sec. At Mach 2, thrust is around 25% what it is at Mach 3-4.

I might add that thermal protection inside and outside becomes THE dominant design issue if you try to fly faster than about Mach 4. The roots of this technology came from missiles, which were ablatively-protected one-shot devices. That kind of refurbishment is very slow and expensive.

You will NOT be able to air-cool them, either. No matter what type of air scoop you use, at Mach 6 the scooped-up air temperatures will be near 3000 F (for reference, meltpoints of steels are 2935 F, or a little less for the stainless grades). Flame hot air, and that's before you add fuel and burn.

Some sort of low-density (and therefore fragile) ceramic might serve for the insulators of the inlet duct and combustor. But you will have to backside-cool them to make it work: you cannot radiate-away heat from a surface located on the inside of your vehicle.

Inconvenient physics again. You can only take advantage of low thermal conductivity by maintaining a heat flow through the material, and that heat has to go somewhere.

The coolant massflow may greatly exceed the engine fuel flow. Depends on how thick you make the low-density insulation. Thicker reduces backside cooling requirements, but raises the surface temperature inside the combustor much closer to the flame temperature. At Mach 6 conditions, flame temperatures will be near 5000 F. (Ionization is reducing the thrust you can get out of the nozzle, too.)

Physics is a bitch, ain't it?

I did an experimental low density ceramic insulator like this decades ago, but not at conditions this extreme. It would handle 3200 F, and so would work in the inlet duct we are talking about here, just as I built it back then. I am looking at some other ceramics to handle a 5000 F flame temperature in the combustor. Will it work? I think so, but I simply don't yet know. No one else does, either.

You don't do this with fire bricks or the new "super-ceramics". Those are high-density, high conductivity, and the backside cooling requirements are truly enormous, even compared to rocket engine flow rates. That's the wrong physics to apply to inlets and combustors. Works for nose tips and leading edges, though.

Characteristics of various airbreathers:

Gas turbine: operates from 0 to about Mach 3.3 max, somewhat low frontal thrust density, very heavy. Limited by (1) turbine inlet temperature < 2200 F for exotic military technologies, (2) compressor stage catastrophic overheat failures above about Mach 3.3 to 3.5, (3) extreme difficulty matching engine air flow demand to inlet scoop massflow characteristics above Mach 2.5, even with variable geometry (which is also very heavy).

Low-speed range ramjet: Mach 0.7 to at most Mach 3, peak Isp 900-1000 sec at about Mach 1.5, nearer 400 at Mach 0.7 and Mach 3. Low frontal thrust density, peaking about Mach 3. Frontal thrust density varies very nearly directly with atmospheric ambient pressure. Very lightweight hardware.

High-Speed Ramjet: Mach 2 to Mach 6 possible with a fixed-geometry nose inlet, shock-on-lip about Mach 3. Peak Isp around 1300-1500 sec about Mach 3-3.5. Thrust rises to peak at shock-on-lip Mach 3, holds near-constant to about Mach 4, decreases slowly to Mach 6 (as drag rises quadratically). Isp near 400 sec at Mach 6. Same frontal thrust variation with altitude as low-speed ramjet, just the numbers are a little higher because chamber pressures are a little higher. Still low. Very lightweight hardware, although slightly heavier than low speed designs, because it is stressed more.

Scramjet: technologically unready-to-apply; min takeover speed Mach 4. With hydrocarbon fuels, peak speed may be in the range Mach 8 to 10, we just do not know yet. With hydrogen, peak speed might be as high as Mach 15-ish, we just do not know yet. Isp is no better than ramjet, really. Neither is frontal thrust density. "Best" values simply occur at higher design speeds. Same frontal thrust density variation with altitude as the other airbreathers. Hardware tends to be heavier than high-speed ramjet, because it is stressed much more.

Effects of using nuclear instead of chemical energy release in any of the airbreathers: somewhat-higher Isp, much heavier inert weights, no changes to thrust levels. Risk of radiation in the exhaust.

GW

end copied posting. Followup comments:

To this I would add the comment that no combined-cycle engine concept is an off the shelf item ready-to-apply, any more than scramjet is. Both have been “15 or 20 years away” since the 1960’s, same as controlled fusion. You cannot go to a manufacturer anywhere and buy one. They don’t work yet, except as very limited, extremely-experimental devices.

That being the case, I see no practical applications for spaceplane concepts except as multi-stage devices to low Earth orbit, and then only for delivery of people at low payload fraction, not bulk cargo.

And I don’t think anybody will ever do that job with a turbojet-powered first stage. The frontal thrust density is just too impossibly low for anything like that to ever be practical! You’re much better off with rockets that can produce gobs of thrust from a small package at takeoff, just when you need it most, because your takeoff weight is so heavy.

In case you’re wondering, I was a real propulsion engineer in industry, for many, many years. I know rockets, ramjets, scramjets, gas turbine, and combined cycle well enough to say these things with very great confidence in my accuracy about them.

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2017-05-22 18:14:11)

SpaceNut · 2017-05-22 18:46:16

Cutting edge to get the most out of performance via refurbishment by a huge standing army just after 1 launch and return. It should have been more robust with a quick look no disassembly and filler up to launch again. But because they did it there way we got a 3rd less launches per shuttle and required 3 times as many to accomplish the task.

It was said to be a flying brick which goes to say why have the dead weight SSME engines if you are not going to be able to use them....oh wait thats because we dropped the tank and have no fuel to use them with....

Yuri Pilipishin · 2017-05-23 03:33:06

kbd512 wrote:

Is there any technical basis for the claim that the Star Raker would not be able to reach orbit, or is that just an opinion?

This is easy to estimate. On turbojet engines, the Star Raker will reach approximately v=1km/sec, h=30km. All the rest of the speed and altitude needed to climb on the orbit must be reached on a rocket engine, while still carrying heavy take-off chassis, spent turbojet engines, as well as wings and fuel tanks completely covered by heat protection. For conventional (non-nuclear) rocket engines, this is impossible with the mass efficiency provided by modern materials.

kbd512 wrote:

Are there any operational scramjet engines larger than the ones on small missiles?

Among large flying vehicles - in the 1950s, Soviet big intercontinental cruise missile "Burya" had flown. Please read:
http://www.airbase.ru/sb/russia/lavochkin/la/350/

kbd512 wrote:

If not, then this concept is no more feasible than Star Raker. I've never seen or heard of any operational scramjet-powered vehicles, although NASA and DoD have certainly tried on several occasions. Personally, I think both concepts are grossly unrealistic on a cost-per-flight basis. The US had an operational lift body program for decades, but nobody I know of would ever argue that it was in any way cost-effective.

Supersonic ramjets (1M < v < 6M) are well-calculated scientifically and could be scaled for large aircraft. Primarily, they were not put on large aircraft simply because they can not work on zero velocity, without an accelerating block. But the first stage that I invented, which you see on the drawings, is just such an accelerating block. From the point of view of costs efficiency per one flight, supersonic ramjets are much better than rocket engines, because they have a much larger working life.

kbd512 wrote:

The Soviets had one flight with Buran, but that vehicle was every bit as unrealistic to operate, on a cost-per-flight basis, as the Space Shuttle was.

It is a big mistake to reduce all the world to commercial efficiency. Both Shuttle and Buran were created more from considerations of national prestige and global military confrontation. Without success of Apollo and Shuttle, the US would stay below the USSR in space race, which would have decisive consequences for the development of the whole global political situation: without these projects, we would live in a completely different world now.

kbd512 wrote:

Few, if any, fully reusable vehicles confer operating cost advantages over current reusable booster technology rockets like Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy. I doubt this concept is any different in that regard.

It rather depends on what kind of commercial payload you are counting on. If we are talking about a few launches per year, then maybe SpaceX reusable boosters could be enough.

However, for example, novadays we face the task of creating a global space Internet, based on many thousands of satellites. For this project (which, by the way, is commercially very profitable), reusable rocket boosters have too small working life, they require too expensive maintenance before each launch and they are not completely reusable when flying to high orbits. Such a large number of satellites could be placed on orbits and maintained much cheaply and conveniently by the spaceplane, which would provide a significantly lower price per kilogram on orbit, and could be re-launched much more times, without need in additional pre-launch service (this is exactly a reason why reusable spaceplane is better than reusable rocket booster).

In addition to commercial payload, this spaceplane could also become a key for a wide variety of military applications ("star wars").

Thus, it is profitable to create such a spaceplane, the costs of its creation should be justified: both from a commercial and from a military point of view. And if this spaceplane would be created, it could be used also for prestigious achievements in space explorations. Only a Martian landing module should be added - and the same, commercially profitable spaceplane, could be used to fly to Mars. For flights to the Moon, a lunar landing module is additionally needed; for landing on asteroids - a rocket backpack (and it also could be commercially profitable: e.g. space tourism).

RobertDyck · 2017-05-23 04:02:05

GW: you can put tags around a copied post.
[ quote ] post from the other thread [ /quote ]
Do not add spaces. I added the spaces so you can see the tags. Without spaces it looks like this...

post from the other thread

More on tags here: BBCode

GW Johnson · 2017-05-23 10:42:38

I am familiar with the old Burya from the 1950's along with many other ramjet systems, both old and much newer. By the way, a "ramjet" is absolutely NOT the same thing as a "scramjet". Do not mix the two concepts. They are fundamentally different in multiple ways, not just the flow speed at which combustion takes place.

Burya was a Mach 3.1 supersonic ramjet intended to fly at 18-20 km altitudes. The cruise stage was over a meter in diameter. At that time most ramjets were rocket boost to ramjet cruise speed, with a big stage-off booster. Burya flew 17 times in test, 14 were successful.

The statement that "supersonic ramjets" are 1 < M < 6 is NOT actually correct in real practice. There are low speed designs that cover 0.7 < M < 2-ish, and high-speed designs that cover 1.8/2.5 < M < 4-to-6 (limited at both ends more by airframe drag relative to available thrust). They differ by some very specific geometric features that you just cannot convert back-and-forth.

The desire to fly gas turbine at 1 km/s and 30 km altitudes is something that has not been possible so far. That speed is a little above Mach 3, and there have been only 3 gas turbine aircraft ever able to fly at such speeds, and none of them that fast at such an altitude.

Those aircraft are: SR-71, XB-70, and Mig-25. The max speed corresponds to level flight at or below service ceilings, which have been down nearer 20-25 km, while the max altitude is during a transient zoom climb, which is a ballistic transient where you simply fall back from a subsonic apogee.

I don't think you'll like the engine inert weights or the required frontal cross-sections for a turbojet first stage, either. The numbers entirely rule out vertical takeoff, and it looks rather ridiculous for horizontal takeoff, if your payload is bigger than a small dog.

Sorry to be so computer illiterate about quotes and such. I was a mechanical engineer. I could write my own engineering software and I still do (although in languages so old most of you have never heard of them), but I never really understood modern computers and all their fancy nuances.

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2017-05-23 10:45:08)

kbd512 · 2017-05-23 11:46:19

Yuri Pilipishin wrote:

This is easy to estimate. On turbojet engines, the Star Raker will reach approximately v=1km/sec, h=30km. All the rest of the speed and altitude needed to climb on the orbit must be reached on a rocket engine, while still carrying heavy take-off chassis, spent turbojet engines, as well as wings and fuel tanks completely covered by heat protection. For conventional (non-nuclear) rocket engines, this is impossible with the mass efficiency provided by modern materials.

There's no magic to providing that first km/s of the required dV increment, but getting above most of the atmosphere by using jet engines saves a little propellant, as a function of the Isp of decent turbojets. Mostly, the jet engines were there to get the vehicle off the ground and to assist with landing.

Yuri Pilipishin wrote:

Among large flying vehicles - in the 1950s, Soviet big intercontinental cruise missile "Burya" had flown. Please read:
http://www.airbase.ru/sb/russia/lavochkin/la/350/

I'm aware of that vehicle, but that was the 1950's. I think the answer you were looking for is "no". If ramjet powered vehicles capable of carrying humans and cargo existed, the technology would not be used by NASA unless they developed the technology. It's called NIH. Maybe you've heard of it. It's a pretty popular concept at the agency these days.

Yuri Pilipishin wrote:

Supersonic ramjets (1M < v < 6M) are well-calculated scientifically and could be scaled for large aircraft. Primarily, they were not put on large aircraft simply because they can not work on zero velocity, without an accelerating block. But the first stage that I invented, which you see on the drawings, is just such an accelerating block. From the point of view of costs efficiency per one flight, supersonic ramjets are much better than rocket engines, because they have a much larger working life.

Considering the fact that so many functional rocket engines that have flown so successfully and so few ramjet-powered aircraft, I tend to disagree.

Yuri Pilipishin wrote:

It is a big mistake to reduce all the world to commercial efficiency. Both Shuttle and Buran were created more from considerations of national prestige and global military confrontation. Without success of Apollo and Shuttle, the US would stay below the USSR in space race, which would have decisive consequences for the development of the whole global political situation: without these projects, we would live in a completely different world now.

I don't think you'll find anyone here who thinks reducing launch costs to figures roughly comparable to commercial airliners is a bad idea. NASA seems to like the idea and so does the US military.

We didn't build the Space Shuttle to further national prestige or for any particular military purpose, even though military requirements adversely affected the usability of the design. President Nixon, told NASA and the US military they were using the same launch vehicle to reduce costs, like it or not. As history clearly shows, cost reduction never happened even though hubris-related accidents did, so our military developed their own expendable launch vehicles which gradually became nearly as costly as the Space Shuttle after ULA established a monopoly over that market. Since SpaceX broke that monopoly, ULA's prices for launch services have taken a nose dive.

NASA developed Saturn V and the Space Shuttle to explore space. Somehow the Russians never quite picked up on that point.

Yuri Pilipishin wrote:

It rather depends on what kind of commercial payload you are counting on. If we are talking about a few launches per year, then maybe SpaceX reusable boosters could be enough.

SpaceX has kept up pretty well with their launch schedule, considering all the new technology they've developed and tested. There's no need for another expensive and pointless development program. We already have such programs. They're called Orion and SLS. I would end both programs today, if given the authority to do so.

Yuri Pilipishin wrote:

However, for example, novadays we face the task of creating a global space Internet, based on many thousands of satellites. For this project (which, by the way, is commercially very profitable), reusable rocket boosters have too small working life, they require too expensive maintenance before each launch and they are not completely reusable when flying to high orbits. Such a large number of satellites could be placed on orbits and maintained much cheaply and conveniently by the spaceplane, which would provide a significantly lower price per kilogram on orbit, and could be re-launched much more times, without need in additional pre-launch service (this is exactly a reason why reusable spaceplane is better than reusable rocket booster).

We've tried the space plane concept and, thankfully, we're done with that now. Since your space plane concept has extreme performance requirements, it's a safe bet that it's neither inexpensive or simple to develop nor maintain. I can look at it, read your description of how it works, and easily determine that it's far more complicated than what SpaceX and Blue Origin have already developed.

Yuri Pilipishin wrote:

In addition to commercial payload, this spaceplane could also become a key for a wide variety of military applications ("star wars").

Space Shuttle never had a real military purpose. If your design does, then see if you can convince the Russian government to develop your design.

Yuri Pilipishin wrote:

Thus, it is profitable to create such a spaceplane, the costs of its creation should be justified: both from a commercial and from a military point of view. And if this spaceplane would be created, it could be used also for prestigious achievements in space explorations. Only a Martian landing module should be added - and the same, commercially profitable spaceplane, could be used to fly to Mars. For flights to the Moon, a lunar landing module is additionally needed; for landing on asteroids - a rocket backpack (and it also could be commercially profitable: e.g. space tourism).

You have an idea in your head that a space plane is profitable or otherwise justified, but our past experience doesn't comport with your assertion.

Once again, we don't explore space for national prestige or self-aggrandizement. That's just propaganda we sell to the self-interested adult children in this country to garner enough support to justify the cost to fund our space program.

Best of luck with development of your design.

Yuri Pilipishin · 2017-05-23 12:32:23

I'm writing somewhat large answer on all the questions; it should take some time, but just a small remark meanwhile.

kbd512 wrote:

Space Shuttle never had a real military purpose.

Oh really? Have you ever heard about SDI? It's orbit-located components (many hundred of tons) were supposed to be brought to orbit by Space Shuttles. In fact, it was the success of Shuttle, what made SDI a real threat for USSR.

kbd512 wrote:

If your design does, then see if you can convince the Russian government to develop your design.

Russian? You said that? Don't forget, that my country Ukraine is waging heavy non-declared war against nuclear Russia, at the time when the West is afraid even to sell us infantry anti-tank missiles, let alone to uphold the obligations due to Budapest Memorandum (it was nuclear disarmament of Ukraine under safety guarantees from the US and UK, let me remember it).

Don't call me a traitor.

kbd512 · 2017-05-23 12:59:38

Yuri Pilipishin wrote:

Space Shuttle never had a real military purpose.
Oh really? Have you ever heard about SDI? It's orbit-located components (many hundred of tons) were supposed to be brought to orbit by Space Shuttles. In fact, it was the success of Shuttle, what made SDI a real threat for USSR.

Well, whatever the USSR thought, the USSR thought. STS was still a failure, if costs were considered in the calculus of how well the design actually worked (or mostly didn't work).

Yuri Pilipishin wrote:

If your design does, then see if you can convince the Russian government to develop your design.
Russian? You said that? Don't forget, that my country Ukraine is waging heavy non-declared war against nuclear Russia, at the time when the West is afraid even to sell us infantry anti-tank missiles, let alone to uphold the obligations due to Budapest Memorandum (it was nuclear disarmament of Ukraine under safety guarantees from the US and UK, let me remember it).
Don't call me a traitor.

I never called you anything and never said you were Russian. You have ideas in your head about things I never stated. I did say, "See if the Russian or European governments are interested." The US government already tried space planes. To wit, we experimented with DynaSoar, Space Shuttle, X-33 / Venture Star, and now X-37B and Dream Chaser (it'll be chasing that dream forever, unfortunately). All of them were or are abysmal in terms of cost.

GW Johnson · 2017-05-23 13:34:41

The US Space Shuttle was originally to have been a two-stage spaceplane rigged for vertical takeoff and horizontal landings of both stages. Both stages were rocket airplanes. It might not have been quite as dangerous if left in that configuration. But the selected heat protection proved to more vulnerable than expected, and more costly to maintain than expected, by far.

This design shrank around a fixed cargo bay size to the cluster we finally built and flew. That cargo bay was intended to carry large USAF spy satellites, and it did until Challenger blew up in flight. Those were spy satellites, not SDI, that were "real" military cargo. SDI never was that "real" as far as space-based assets are concerned.

The Soviet Russians copied it, revised it some, and tried it out as a shuttle they named Buran. They only flew it once. Their R-7 with a Soyuz on top seemed safer, cheaper, and more reliable, for what they wanted to do.

That's not to say a spaceplane cannot be practical, because it can. But it needs to be for small payloads for which cost is no object, but "anywhere" landing convenience is required. Such payloads are usually crew members.

The larger landing system, a full blown reentry-capable airplane, is (and will always be) heavier than a capsule for the same payload. Bigger return vehicle is a bigger launch vehicle. Bigger launch vehicle is pricier, there is simply no way around that, no matter what reusability stunts you pull. Ultimately, size matters. Launch vehicles are not airliners, and will never be airliners. The flight conditions are just too demanding to make that pipe dream feasible.

No long life ramjet aircraft have ever really been built. But they could be. None have, because all the applications so far have been missiles. But if you want to fly an airplane faster than about Mach 3.3, it will have to be ramjet or rocket powered. Turbomachinery simply cannot cope with the high inlet air temperatures beyond that speed; plus, the complications required to match engine airflow demand with inlet air capture capability just get ridiculous. Ramjet does not suffer from that matching problem.

GW

Yuri Pilipishin · 2017-05-23 13:50:12

GW Johnson wrote:

To this I would add the comment that no combined-cycle engine concept is an off the shelf item ready-to-apply, any more than scramjet is. Both have been “15 or 20 years away” since the 1960’s, same as controlled fusion. You cannot go to a manufacturer anywhere and buy one. They don’t work yet, except as very limited, extremely-experimental devices.

If under "combined-cycle" you mean something like SABRE engines of Skylon, then it's agreed. These combined devices seems impossible in real world; too much adverticement with no results.

GW Johnson wrote:

That being the case, I see no practical applications for spaceplane concepts except as multi-stage devices to low Earth orbit, and then only for delivery of people at low payload fraction, not bulk cargo.

Surely, spaceplanes are not intended to bring lots of tons of cargo on orbit; instead, they could fly to orbit very frequently, with minimal price per kilogram.

But also, you forget my invention of multiple and multistage refueling; this made it possible for reusable spaceplanes to reach Moon, Mars, asteriods, and so on.

To bring a lot of cargo on orbit, surely it's better to use reusable rockets (not as much re-launches as for spaceplanes, but much more cargo per one launch). If someone would be interested, I have a project (it's my intellectual property, either) of such a completely reusable rocket (taking as a prototype rocket Energiya):
http://lychakivsky.dreamwidth.org/7959.html

GW Johnson wrote:

And I don’t think anybody will ever do that job with a turbojet-powered first stage. The frontal thrust density is just too impossibly low for anything like that to ever be practical! You’re much better off with rockets that can produce gobs of thrust from a small package at takeoff, just when you need it most, because your takeoff weight is so heavy.

Let me remember you Ukrainian "Mriya" aircraft. It is not only the most powerful cargo aircraft in the world - it also is intended to be exactly the said turbojet first stage for space launch. Maybe, you heard about MAKS project (small shuttle with external fuel tank) or "Air launch" (two-staged rocket system; as far as I'm informed they even evolutionize it to complete reusability), both intended to start from the top of "Mriya".

GW Johnson wrote:

The statement that "supersonic ramjets" are 1 < M < 6 is NOT actually correct in real practice. There are low speed designs that cover 0.7 < M < 2-ish, and high-speed designs that cover 1.8/2.5 < M < 4-to-6 (limited at both ends more by airframe drag relative to available thrust). They differ by some very specific geometric features that you just cannot convert back-and-forth.

In my project, ramjets should start at M2.5 h=25km, and climb upward to M5(6) h=50 km. So they could be specialized for that altitudes and velocities (by "some very specific geometric features", as you have said).

GW Johnson wrote:

I don't think you'll like the engine inert weights or the required frontal cross-sections for a turbojet first stage, either. The numbers entirely rule out vertical takeoff, and it looks rather ridiculous for horizontal takeoff, if your payload is bigger than a small dog.

Why? If we take, just for estimate, turbojet engines of Soviet Tu - 144: it's four engines enable take-off weight of more than 200 000 kg (with the aerodynamic characteristics, very similar to my spaceplane); so, if we'd implement my concept of spaceplane with those engines, we would end up with final cargo on LEO estimately 2 000 - 3 000 kg (which is already not bad). And those engines were implemented in 1960s; now, after half a century pass, I think it would be possible to implement more powerful engines, so take-off weight could be nearly 500 000 kg, and final cargo on LEO - estimately 5 000 kg. That would made achiveable all the claimed functionality: including manned trip to Moon, Mars, and asteroids.

Last edited by Yuri Pilipishin (2017-05-23 20:32:37)

RobertDyck · 2017-05-23 14:05:21

GW Johnson wrote:

The desire to fly gas turbine at 1 km/s and 30 km altitudes is something that has not been possible so far. That speed is a little above Mach 3, and there have been only 3 gas turbine aircraft ever able to fly at such speeds, and none of them that fast at such an altitude.
Those aircraft are: SR-71, XB-70, and Mig-25.

NASA worked on X-43A, an unmanned test vehicle that flew at mach 9.8 using hydrogen fuel. It was supposed to fly at mach 10; close enough. At that time there was work on X-43C, a larger vehicle that was to use a turbine engine using kerosene based jet fuel, take-off and land on a runway, and fly to a top speed of mach 6. It was cancelled, but official statements at the time stated the Air Force intended to continue work on their own as a black project. Rumours are they completed it. I believe the engine would have a full bypass mode so it would become a pure RAM jet. NASA project description was a combined cycle engine that would operate as a SCRAM jet at top speed, but even if they didn't get that to work, operating as a pure RAM jet would permit speeds much faster than the aircraft you listed.

GW Johnson · 2017-05-23 15:59:49

The Tu-144 was the Russian supersonic transport airliner. It had a cruise speed of Mach 2.16 and a max speed of 2.35. Mach 2-2.5 airplane designs are a whole lot easier to match engine and supersonic inlet. What I remember, and what I read today jibes well: it worked, but it also had a lot of problems that caused a lot of trouble. It and the Anglo-French Concorde were actually rather similar airplanes.

If Mach 2-ish at 18-20 km is enough, then a turbojet airplane like that could be a first stage for a second stage or second/third stage combination. But that payload would have to be rather small and very well-streamlined, or your first stage won't even reach that Mach 2-ish condition. Ain't gonna work to have a big piggyback item for a payload in supersonic flight.

Not to mention the supersonic store separation problem. That was tried with the D-21 drone atop a variant of the SR-71, till it killed a crew in a collision during separation. Very, very serious risk, staging at supersonic speeds down in sensible air.

As for X-43A, it was a waverider shape with a heat-sink (non-steady state) scramjet design. It was boost to airbreather speed, followed by a 3-second scramjet burn. The airbreather never accelerated the vehicle. 3 flights, two successes. The first one was approximately Mach 7 in 2004, followed by that approximate Mach 10 flight. The NASA crew cheered breaking ASALM's speed record of Mach 6, but none of them actually knew what an ASALM was. They were too young.

I worked on ASALM. It was a supersonic cruise missile designed for Mach 4 cruise at 80,000 feet (24 km). It was an integral booster-equipped kerosene ramjet. Airframe was martensitic stainless steel, simple cylindrical form, wingless, chin inlet. It flew 6.5 of 7 tries perfectly in 1980. The very first test had a throttle-runaway accident, and accidentally reached Mach 6 at 20 kft-ish altitude (around 6 or 7 km). We only considered that one half successful. However, the airbreather accelerated the vehicle from Mach 2.5 to Mach 6 in only several seconds.

Scramjet has NEVER EVER done that (accelerate a vehicle). Not X-43A, nor the X51A that did 2 successful 3-minute burns at Mach 5 out of 4 tries. Neither of them accelerated as airbreathers. The -43 was hydrogen-fueled, while the -51 used the last of the JP-7 thermally-stable kerosene fuel in existence. The new TS fuels are made from JP-8.

The J-79's that pushed the SR-71 (using JP-7) were advertised as air-turbo-ramjet combined cycle engines, but they were not. That was a 0-to-25% air bypass to the afterburner from stage 4 of the compressor, not the inlet. A real combined-cycle air turbo ramjet would have a way to bypass 100% of the air to the afterburner, thus protecting the turbine core from overheated inlet air above Mach 3.3-3.5. To this day, NOT ONE of those exists.

Nor does a rocket-based combined cycle, better described as an ejector ramjet. Ejector ramjet test articles have been tested, but not ejector scramjets. Why compromise the scramjet with a rocket up its butt, when the plain scramjet really doesn't work right yet, too much of the time?

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2017-05-23 16:10:42)

Yuri Pilipishin · 2017-05-24 00:28:45

GW Johnson wrote:

The Tu-144 was the Russian supersonic transport airliner.

Just a small political remark meanwhile. Tu-144 was not "Russian", but *Soviet* supersonic airliner. I know, on the West it's usual to think that Soviet always mean Russian. This habit is profitable for Russians, but in fact it's wrong, especially in the field we're discussing on.

USSR was *not* the Russian Empire. Formally, USSR was a union of free national states, called "republics". In all constitutions of USSR, it was always stated that every republic have a right to dissipate from USSR. For example, Joseph Stalin insisted on that "right to dissipation" in Constitution of USSR, arguing that otherwise USSR shouldn't be called "union of free republics". And when in 1991 Soviet republics really decided to dissipate, it was mainly due to that.

Of course, Soviet republics transferred some attributes of sovereighnity to Union: the USSR had centralized army, the one currency (rouble), and generally, it was very centraized state. But still, all national republics had their own flags, coat-of-arms, national anthems, they had their own elected government bodies. In Soviet passports, a "nationality" field was provided, and all Soviet republics had their own official national languages.

I write that, because when we talk about engines of Tu-144, if you called Tu-144 "Russian" it might sound like I have less moral rights to mention it (taking into account that Russia now is waging war against my country, Ukraine). But, in that connection, let's not forget that founding father of Soviet turbojet engine industry was Chief Designer, academician Arkhip Ljulka, and he was Ukrainian:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkhip_Lyulka

And, as we're discussing aerospace industry: nearly all of Soviet Chief Designers, these who created power and glory of Soviet aerospace industry, were Ukrainians.

Sergey Korolev (Sputnik, Gagarin, first lunar and martian probes - you can't forget it)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Korolev

Valentin Glushko (engines for Korolev rockets, lots of space engine research, and the most powerful Soviet rocket, Energiya)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentin_Glushko

Vladimir Chelomey (Proton rocket, Moon project, spaceplane project, space stations and a lot of military space research)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Chelomey

Gleb Lozino-Lozinskiy (spaceplanes: Buran, Spiral project, MAKS project)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleb_Lozino-Lozinskiy

Grigory Kisunko (strategic anti-missile defence)
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Кисунько, … Васильевич

I write that, just to explain, why I insist that "Soviet" doesn't mean "Russian". Especially in aerospace industry, "Soviet" very often mean rather "Ukrainian". And this is not only words: often, this is major scientific priorities, giving important rights.

Antius · 2017-05-24 06:12:32

Many thanks for GW’s input. It allows some sensible parameters to be set for any design concept.

The scramjet does not appear to be a practical vehicle for achieving anything approaching orbital velocity. At Mach 6, the shock heating and mechanical stresses on the fuselage are extreme and dissociation begins to ruin engine efficiency at that speed too. At Mach 3.3 and 80,000’, the SR-71 designers estimated that a pilot would experience temperatures exceeding 200C during bail-out due to shock heating. If temperature scales with kinetic energy of the air stream, Mach 6 would mean an 800C shock heating for anything non-aerodynamic deployed at this altitude. Mechanical stresses would be equally enormous. From GWs information, it would appear that ramjets have insufficient thrust-density above altitudes of 100,000’ to climb. Deploying a second stage at that altitude is too dangerous and at Mach 1 would only represent a 1km/s contribution to total dV of ~9km/s.

Here are some thoughts on lower stage design:

1. Extreme thermal and mechanical stresses would tend to limit the life of the airframe and undermine reusability. It also requires thermal protection, which would be expensive to maintain between flights. So top speed and acceleration within the atmosphere should be kept to modest values.

2. The second stage cannot safely deploy from a concealed payload bay at altitudes much lower than 200,000’, so it is difficult for a ramjet alone to function as a lower stage. Ramjets have poor fuel efficiency below Mach 1 and aren’t workable beneath 400mph. On this basis, a hybrid concept would appear most workable, with separate ramjet and rocket engines. The rockets would be used for take-off and boosting speed to ~Mach 1 and would power up again at ~100,000’ at which point acceleration would be close to vertical. Second stage could deploy at 200,000’. To keep development costs as low as possible, the vehicle should avoid stretching the state of the art. The vehicle should use off-the-shelf equipment such as (SR-71?) ramjet engines and LOX/Kerosene rocket engines. The later could be pressure fed, or maybe oxygen would be pressure fed with common diesel injection pumps used for both the ramjets and rockets.

3. The main purpose of the lower stage is to allow the second stage to be released above the sensible atmosphere. This eliminates the requirement for designing the upper stages for aerodynamic forces and means that the engines deploy in vacuum.

4. The second and third stages are released above the atmosphere, so wings would appear to be redundant. The re-entry shock heating problem and mechanical stresses on the air frame, means that it would appear to be difficult to design upper stages for reusability. A reusable stage would have a limited service life, would require thermal protection that would need to be replenished between missions and would have much greater deadweight, reducing payload capacity. It may be more cost effective simply to mass produce disposable systems and bring down costs through volume production of simple (i.e. pressure-fed) disposable upper stages.

Last edited by Antius (2017-05-24 06:20:24)

GW Johnson · 2017-05-24 10:07:58

What I know about launching to space is empirical, although I have done some design rough-outs for configuration sizing. There's a priority listing of beneficial factors from most important to least: (1) velocity at release (maximize), (2) path angle at release (above 45 degrees), and (3) altitude (maximize).

You're not free to just select numbers, however. With respect to velocity at release, safe store separation down in the sensible atmosphere of a parallel-mounted store is limited to high subsonic speeds. Not that supersonic release isn't possible, but it has caused fatal accidents. Speeds like that are associated with aerodynamic forces greater than store weight. It cannot just "fall away" under gravity.

Also with respect to velocity at release, turbojet is speed-limited to at most about Mach 3.3, and ramjet to about Mach 4-6, depending upon the balance between vehicle thrust and drag. Higher ramjet speed is for very clean aerodynamic designs indeed, nothing at all like what we might call an airplane.

Finally, for speeds above Mach 6 in anything remotely like sensible air, there is shock impingement heating from the wave off an adjacent store or nacelle striking other structures close by. This magnifies heating rates by close to an order of magnitude, destroying the impinged structure very quickly. This very nearly caused the loss of an X-15, and is exactly why parallel nacelles for entry vehicles is complete and utter nonsense.

With respect to path angle, pulling up will sharply decrease the speed of any lifting vehicle, unless you can add more thrust on the order of the vehicle's weight. All airbreathers of any kind are very sharply limited on frontal thrust density in thin air. Such thrust additions are simply not possible, so the maneuver is forbidden. Service ceilings for real aircraft designs range from about 40,000 to about 90,000 feet. The high figures correspond to the U-2 and the SR-71.

Altitude: most subsonic aircraft are limited to service ceilings carrying loads under 50,000 feet. The supersonic craft capable reaching the higher altitudes (80-90 kft) don't really have much load-carrying capacity, or even a place to carry it.

All that being said, there is an operational air-launched space access system: it is called Pegasus. The first stage is a big airliner (an L-1011 I think it is). Pegasus is a winged rocket plane dropped subsonically from beneath it. Pegasus expends a lot of its rocket power pulling up sharply with that wing to achieve a ballistic trajectory toward orbit.

Upon rocket burnout, the second rocket stage ignites and pushes the payload up a zero lift gravity turn. There is no possibility of aerodynamic recovery of the winged rocket stage, the weight and balance are infeasible after staging.

Payload is quite small (if memory serves, a couple of hundred pounds to low Earth orbit). There isn't much market for payloads that small anymore, which explains why Pegasus is not much of a market success. But that payload ratio applies to any system you care to scale up: a couple of hundred pounds out of the half-million pounds of a loaded airliner.

You'd be just about as well off paying for a 4-stage expendable solid like the old "Scout", which had about that same payload capacity in the 1960's. After banking the funds for engine and airframe overhauls for the airliner, it would take a lot of launches to make the airliner-based system pay off better.

GW

Yuri Pilipishin · 2017-05-24 11:34:36

GW Johnson wrote:

The Tu-144 was the Russian supersonic transport airliner. It had a cruise speed of Mach 2.16 and a max speed of 2.35. Mach 2-2.5 airplane designs are a whole lot easier to match engine and supersonic inlet. What I remember, and what I read today jibes well: it worked, but it also had a lot of problems that caused a lot of trouble. It and the Anglo-French Concorde were actually rather similar airplanes.
If Mach 2-ish at 18-20 km is enough, then a turbojet airplane like that could be a first stage for a second stage or second/third stage combination. But that payload would have to be rather small and very well-streamlined, or your first stage won't even reach that Mach 2-ish condition. Ain't gonna work to have a big piggyback item for a payload in supersonic flight.
Not to mention the supersonic store separation problem. That was tried with the D-21 drone atop a variant of the SR-71, till it killed a crew in a collision during separation. Very, very serious risk, staging at supersonic speeds down in sensible air.

GW Johnson wrote:

I worked on ASALM. It was a supersonic cruise missile designed for Mach 4 cruise at 80,000 feet (24 km). It was an integral booster-equipped kerosene ramjet. Airframe was martensitic stainless steel, simple cylindrical form, wingless, chin inlet. It flew 6.5 of 7 tries perfectly in 1980. The very first test had a throttle-runaway accident, and accidentally reached Mach 6 at 20 kft-ish altitude (around 6 or 7 km). We only considered that one half successful. However, the airbreather accelerated the vehicle from Mach 2.5 to Mach 6 in only several seconds.

Well, when we started talking about it, let me describe in details, how my spaceplane is presumed to fly into space.

Take off from a regular runway, on four turbojet engines of the first stage (the two - fuselage tandem airframe, mounted under the big wing of the second stage, which you could see on the drawings). For additional acceleration during takeoff, the rocket engine of the third stage could be also employed, for a short time; but this would burn rocket fuel needed when we'd climb higher, and so I don't like this possibility, this is just to mention.

Four turbojets of the first stage climb the system to altitude about 20 - 25 km, and velocity about М2.3 - М2.5. On this altitude and velocity, ramjets of the second stage are ignited (more precisely, this altitude and velocity is dependent on the characteristics of ramjets: on which minimal velocity and altitude they are able to ignite, provided we're trying to specialize them for maximal velocities and altitudes). During some time, when thrust from ramjets is not very high yet, the system could accelerate with turbojets and ramjets, working simultaneously; moreover, it would be even possible to implement a pass-through for fuel from first stage to the second one, so when ramjets are burning with first stage attached, they are fed by fuel from tanks of the first stage.

Then, it's time to separate the first stage; I know, it could be the problem, but it surely could be solved. For example, if thrust of turbojets of the first stage would be slightly stronger than thrust of ramjets of the second stage, the first stage could move slightly forward (no obstacles there due to geometry); and as wing load per square of the first stage is significantly stronger as compared to wing load per square of the second stage (because wings of the first stage are so small), the first stage would also move slightly down. That way, the stages could safely separate (I know, some problems could also appear due to Bernoulli effect between aerodynamical planes of first and second stages, and supersonic shock waves, etc.; but it all surely can be sorted out, we just need to work upon it, for example trying to work out separation of stages on small flying RC models).

After the first stage is separated, the two rear vertical stabilizers are unnfolded (as shown on the drawings), and the stage fly on it's own small wings to the runway (still using it's turbojets, or maybe even gliding). Ramjets of the second stage climb the system to altitude about 50 - 60 km, and velocity about M5 - M6. We need to specialize the ramjets to work on maximal altitudes; it's also possible to inject on high altitudes some liguid oxidizer in burning chambers of ramjets (so they would still burn even on very high altitudes - this is not my idea); but nevertheless, on very high altitudes their thrust became weaker. So, on some moment, a rocket engine of the third stage is ignited, fed by fuel and oxidizer from the second stage (the second stage plays a role of external fuel tank). For some time, weaking ramjets are working together with rocket engine. Than, ramjets are shot down, and the system climbs into space on the rocket engine of the third stage, fed by fuel from the second stage (geometrically, we could store a lot of fuel there).

Having burned all the fuel/oxidizer from second stage, the system reach on altitude of about 100 km, or even higher (nearest space, out of atmosphere), with horizontal velocity about 1.5 km/sec. There, the second and the third stages are separated (no atmosphere, no problem with separation). Than, the second stage fly down, glide and land on the runway; when the third stage, full of fuel/oxidizer, obtain with it's rocket engine these additional 6.5 km/sec, reaching low Earth orbit.

It's worth to mention: we really could see the second stage (the big wing) as an external fuel tank. The matter is, it could be done very light (with very good mass efficiency). The mass of ramjets, themselves, could also be low; at the contrary to turbojets, there are nothing to be heavy in ramjets (no compressor, no turbine). The big fat wing of the second stage could be done in a way, that it keeps itself strong just by internal pressure, like inflatable toy (of course, there is some art in making it's internal fuel/oxidizer tanks, so they would keep the aerodynamical form of that big wing just by internal pressure; but that could be done). Also, this (nearly inflatable) wing could have a sharp leading edge attached, and this leading edge could be cooled by flow of fuel/oxidizer, pumped through the internal channels of the edge before using.

Being so light, the second stage needs no heat protection (maybe, it only should be done from heat-proof materials: hot frame), gliding through atmosphere to land on a runway. On the contrary, the third stage (spaceship) would need heat protection; although not so thick as the Shuttle or Buran had, because of much less wing load per square.

It seems to be all; but, as far as we started the techical talks, I'll try to explain my invention of multiple and multistaged refuelings, and all the other things, concerning interplanetary flights on completely reusable spaceships.

And so, the third stage of the spaceplane (spaceship) is flying around the Earth, on LEO, with (nearly) empty fuel tanks. Let's imagine, what if we don't load any cargo to some another similar spaceship, and launch it to orbit, somewhere nearly by the first one? As there is no cargo loaded, it'll arrive with some rest of fuel/oxidizer in its tanks. What if we dock these spaceships together, and transfer this small rest of fuel/oxydizer into tanks of the first one (of course, docking devices should be provided)?

Ok, transferring of fuel/oxidizer is over, spaceships undocked, and the second one is going to land. Let's launch yet another spaceship without cargo, so it transfer the small rest of fuel/oxidizer into tanks of the first spaceship, than undock and land. And so on, and on, and on - let's launch new and new spaceships without cargo one after another (or only one - but launch it many times), so they'll dock to the first spaceship with small rest of fuel/oxidizer, than transfer the fuel/oxidizer into its tanks, than undock and land (for simplification, I'll sometimes say "fuel", meaning "fuel/oxidizer").

It's easy to see, that we could repeat such a procedure, until we end up with fuel/oxidizer tanks of the first spaceship completely full. This is especially convenient exactly with completely reusable spaceplanes: because of their minimal cost per launch. (In fact, all elements of my spaceplane are reusable for hundred and thousand times, nearly like an aircraft; the only exception is the rocket engine of the third stage: it also could be reusable, but it's working lifetime probably would be much smaller, so we'll need to provide a possibility to easily change the worn-out engine by the new one).

And so, after a few (about 10 - 15, depending on mass efficiency) additional refueling launches, we could have the third stage (spaceship) completely refuelled on LEO. It makes possible bringing the cargo on high orbit, or even flying around the Moon. But again, what if our spaceship just moved on high circular orbit, using some fuel? Couldn't we completely refuel it there? Of course yes: we just need to launch one other spaceship, that would accumulate fuel on LEO from arriving spacepllanes, and than brought it to high orbit, using some fuel for that. And so on, and on, and on: in that way, we could fly to every possible highest Earth orbit, including geostationary. And also we could fly to Moon, came up to Moon orbit, and return to LEO.

At that, we see, most of times the spaceships would carry not a payload, but the fuel/oxidizer; and it would be good to implement specialized spaceship (the third stage) to carry only fuel/oxidizer. Of course, the fuel/oxidizer should be carried in the same tanks that are used for feeding engines (no need to divide them); but, because specialized tanker spaceship will return to Earth always empty, and because there should be no cargo bay between fuel and oxidizer tanks, the tanker could be done lighter, with smaller wings and less heat protection; so it would be more mass - effective, as compared with the general cargo (or passenger) spaceship (and this is the very reason, why it's profitable to implement the reusable tanker: in fact, every spaceship could be used as tanker, it's only less mass - effective).

Also, as we could see, sometimes we'll use some tankers in space without need to return them to Earth: for example, to routinely carry fuel from low orbit to high orbit, an then return to low orbit, to get fuel again. That way, some tankers could be used in space until their rocket engines would wore out. But then, we could implement also unreturnable tankers: without wings and heat protection (which would made them again more mass effective). Those unreturnable tankers could be used to shorten expenses for some operation on orbit.

The docking device for such operations would be better done "universal" and standartized, all the same for all spaceships. Such a docking device could be seen on my drawings: every device have one hollow rod and one funnel (pipelines to fuel/oxydizer tanks should be able to recommutate by valves: so fuel and oxidizer wouldn't be mixed).

Also, it seems profitable to choose the one, standard fuel/oxidizer, that would be used for all possible space operations (this fuel/oxidizer would be also used to climb spaceplane to the orbit, because it is used by rocket engine of the third stage). This fuel/oxidizer should not be cryogenic, because it should not evaporate when spaceship is heated under the sunlight. When I invented this project (it was nearly 1999yr, or maybe 2000), first I thought about standard Soviet non-cryogenic fuel (unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine + nitrogen tetroxide); but, it was clear even then, this standard fuel pair should be choosen very thorougly, and maybe some other variant appear in future. After that invention became known to others in summer 2005, nearly in winter 2009/2010, I obtained interesting hint from my team: for the standard oxidizer, we could use concentrated hydrogen peroxide. It is good for manned flight, because oxygen, water and energy could be obtained from it (and also, it is a good one-component fuel, e.g. for rocket backpack). Concerning the fuel for this oxidizer, there are a few variants (they were researched by Valentin Glushko): the best seem ordinary kerosene (Imp = 320sec), or pentaborane (Imp=380sec). Kerosene seems somewhat weak, pentaborane much better, but it is very toxic. So it rather depends on how good mass efficiency we could reach: if the Martian flight could be done with kerosene, than ok, but if not - than pentaborane seems to be better choise.

All those standard third stages: cargo, tanker, unreturnable tanker - are good for different operations in space (e.g. they could be used as orbital transfer vehicles for different satellites, provided the satellite has simple docking device, without refueling capability, just one funnel); but for landing on Moon and Mars, special landing modules should be additionally implemented.

The Lunar landing module could be very simple, transported on low Earth orbit in cargo bay, than refueled and transferred (of course, the standard docking device should be provided) to low Moon orbit. After several landing and take offs again on the Moon orbit (every time refueled) it could be abandoned there, or even returned back to Earth. Lunar module itself shouldn't posess a cabin for pilots: most time, it'll transfer to/from the Moon some cargo, attached right on it's deсk. But if we want to land people on the Moon, a lightweight cabin could be mounted on the deсk, making the lunar module able to carry people.

The Martian landing module is the quite different thing. Mars have some atmosphere, and it's orbital velocity is higher. Therefore, we'll need much more fuel, to land even one man to Mars, and bring him back again to the low Martian orbit. And so, the Martian landing module could be done as a (very specific) third stage of my spaceplane; it takes off and climbs to LEO like the usual third stage; than, after a few refuelings, it is transferred to low Martian orbit, refueled again, and preparing to land on Mars (a man, or a crew of two, would enter into this apparatus from "ordinary" spaceship with living module, by docking on Martian orbit). During landing on Mars, the landing module got slower by reaction of Martian atmosphere (gliding on high velocity), and than lands on it's tail (as it could be seen on drawings). After the crew visited Mars, the module starts again to low Marian orbit (we'll need some thermal protection, and even some thermal shield on the bottom of the apparatus, to protect fuel from boiling during gliding through Mars atmosphere; and the mass efficiency should be really good, to made possible climbing to low Martian orbit again).

Landing on asteriods is an easier thing: the rocket backpack is enough, no other module is needed.

Also, it's worth mentioning, that wings and thermal protection of all those third stages (cargo, passenger, tanker, Mars landing module) could be profitably used for interplanetary trasportation. When the third stage (spaceship) arrives to planet with interplanetary velocity (e.g. backing to Earth from Moon, or arriving to Mars, etc.) it should made the velocity slower, in order to transfer into circular orbit. This could be done by flying through upper layers of the atmosphere of the planet on the high altitide, so the spaceship won't stay sunk in the atmosphere, but should exit from it back to space (with slower velocity). That way, transferring to the high elliptical orbit and passing through upper layers of atmosphere each time when at minimal altitude, spaceship could got much slower and transfer to low circular orbit - which would demand a lot of fuel without such an atmospherical trick.

This project was invented by me during 1997..2000 years; and in summer 2005, it became known to other people. At the moment, it is my intellectual property. Also, in order to prove my authorship and priority, I would pass a modern variant of lie detector (subliminal questions, answers from the unconscious, but without any possible control or accountability).

Last edited by Yuri Pilipishin (2017-05-26 15:05:21)

SpaceNut · 2017-05-24 17:13:46

I do remember talking about the Space Launch Initiative aka space planes in a couple of topics.
Space Initive Launch Vehicle
New Space Shuttle
SLI is dead, what comes next?

Just start to look at them and I now have some more cleaning of topics to make them readable once more.....
Needless to say if we need to build it big just to get to orbit then make it reuseable then we will always need a standing army to service them....
Lets stick with simple and even then throwing it away is still cheaper than doing the reuseable big rocket plane.....

GW Johnson · 2017-05-25 09:04:23

I don't think there is much in the way of intellectual property to be claimed here. There have been spaceplane proposals since the 1940's, and they got serious about it in the 1950's with the X-20 Dyna-Soar project, cancelled in 1963 with the first 3 test craft coming off the production line. Horizontal takeoff staged spaceplanes were studied as part of the definition of the Space Shuttle in the late '60's into the early 70's, when the design approach pretty much "froze".

The latest is the notion of the horizontal takeoff rocket airplane as first stage for a rocket-as-payload released above the sensible atmosphere. The civilian versions are the XCOR "Lynx" and the Virgin Galactic "Spaceship Two". The military version is the XS-1 that DARPA just gave to Boeing this week. XS-1 is Boeing's attempt to steal XCOR's approach, just in an craft the size of a business jet instead of a light airplane.

Note that none of these are large craft, and none of these are aimed at anything beyond orbit. What is the point of taking wings you cannot use to the moon or anywhere else? Wings might be made to work at Mars, but because that "air" is so thin, the airplane that works there will be nothing like any airplane that works here.

What these concepts have in common, except for Shuttle, is that the craft were small, intended to deliver people and and their luggage. Cargo is best delivered vertical launch in an expendable or semi-expendable rocket. If you can recover and reuse first stages, so much the better. But prices have already dropped dramatically due to reductions in the sizes of support populations, even without reusability at all.

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2017-05-25 09:04:49)

Yuri Pilipishin · 2017-05-26 15:08:36

GW Johnson wrote:

I don't think there is much in the way of intellectual property to be claimed here. There have been spaceplane proposals since the 1940's, and they got serious about it in the 1950's with the X-20 Dyna-Soar project, cancelled in 1963 with the first 3 test craft coming off the production line. Horizontal takeoff staged spaceplanes were studied as part of the definition of the Space Shuttle in the late '60's into the early 70's, when the design approach pretty much "froze".
The latest is the notion of the horizontal takeoff rocket airplane as first stage for a rocket-as-payload released above the sensible atmosphere. The civilian versions are the XCOR "Lynx" and the Virgin Galactic "Spaceship Two". The military version is the XS-1 that DARPA just gave to Boeing this week. XS-1 is Boeing's attempt to steal XCOR's approach, just in an craft the size of a business jet instead of a light airplane.
Note that none of these are large craft, and none of these are aimed at anything beyond orbit. What is the point of taking wings you cannot use to the moon or anywhere else? Wings might be made to work at Mars, but because that "air" is so thin, the airplane that works there will be nothing like any airplane that works here.
What these concepts have in common, except for Shuttle, is that the craft were small, intended to deliver people and and their luggage. Cargo is best delivered vertical launch in an expendable or semi-expendable rocket. If you can recover and reuse first stages, so much the better. But prices have already dropped dramatically due to reductions in the sizes of support populations, even without reusability at all.
GW

I've never said, that there were no other projects of space planes (although I've seen just a very few ones that would be completely reusable, with take off and landing on a standard runway, and at that, able to really reach Earth orbit; and they were different). I thought, we would be discussing rather technical problems; but when you are talking about my intellectual property rights, it is unexpected. I was used to think that there are so much of new and non - obvious inventions in those drawings, that my intellectual property rights are undoubted, and this my standard paragraph about intellectual property, proven by lie detector etc., should be written rather for Russians (I had done some harm to them, and most probably they are overhearing my Internet activity; and they were already caught on the attempts to plagiarize my inventions of space launch vehicles).

I need to think. Hopefully, I'll write again in a few days. Meanwhile, I had corrected some misspellings in my previous long text.

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